Optimal Layouts

[PyroFire]

Let me know if im doin it rite



Belt/Beacon Furnaces: https://gyazo.com/05c6b91daa113d7aa92b1103e626f62d
Blueprint: https://gyazo.com/7af32d7021b72f0ef09f26a12ddb809a
Due to how the belts are layed out, these furnaces can process 2 full expressbelts of resource and output at max compression if you build it large enough.

Belt/Beacon Tier 1 Assemblers (highest throughput): https://gyazo.com/8c0a1d7cf09418123dd34dd4b2c59776
Blueprint: https://gyazo.com/36fef41cfec6afa5d4b67ce4ae35bde6
Belt/Beacon Tier 1 Assemblers (highest energy efficiency): https://gyazo.com/4b2928fe71a0da37b298852f7d8831d9
Similar to the furnaces, the high-throughput can also input/output 2 express belts at max compression if you build it large enough.
And special thanks to the Heavy Loader, now you only need 1 inserter to fill assemblers off the belts, although there is still room to add a second one to the outside if you need it.
The highest energy efficiency is based on calculations as suggested later on in this thread (reference link: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... uctivity3/ )
This design requires a balancer after one side of the express belt is reaching maximum capacity, similar to the below design.
If liquids are not required, simply remove the pipes.

Belt/Beacon Tier 2 Assemblers: https://gyazo.com/285a5ef73ba58ea8067e014726652c5b
Blueprint: https://gyazo.com/973056451216e95d3618466557449594
This one was a bit tricky.
It's for items that require 3 or 4 crafting materials to make.
In its current design, it cannot balance the outer express belts meaning items will all land on one side of the belt.
It will still output one fully compressed express belt.
With some minor adjusting, you can add balancers on the outside to allow the contraption to output 2 max compressed express belts (refer: highest energy efficiency screenshot above)
However it is limited to half an express belt per crafting material on the input.
For items with 3 materials, you can fill the second belt with whatever it needs more of.

Belt/Beacon Liquid-Component Assemblers: https://gyazo.com/9857262433badb3fa56de01e54ee70a7
Blueprint: https://gyazo.com/21511b2cf0c1796f92af4173818a3075
Like the previous assembler components, this one can also handle 2 max compression express belts input/output.

Oil: https://gyazo.com/e27fccb40fa11c7e6ecf3a27ce5a362e
Blueprint: https://gyazo.com/c69569ab2179fd2ea9090d468346d714
Slightly offcenter, but it tesselates rather efficiently when used in larger builds.

Oil Cracking: https://gyazo.com/0a0d362036c94ff811ed9ca86ce3f4ab
Blueprint: https://gyazo.com/f1fbb96adade2d25e7b77e19f32267a0

Fortified Train Lines: https://gyazo.com/f454dc7943225c60984ca3af730cd784
Straight Rail Piece Blueprint: https://gyazo.com/282acd78bba3a15eafc218302f594c01
4-way Roundabout Intersection Blueprint: https://gyazo.com/150aa81be6e25cd309b3bcc46605c84e
4-way Belt Intersection Close-up: https://gyazo.com/7fde743524d78404a7550e07d1bf6aff
Generic Inline Trainstation: https://gyazo.com/3a6841e09456f1cb67507ce7fc427941
Trainstation Roundabout Adaptor https://gyazo.com/6124815bb7b20343d833fa6cd4d5639e
This was fun to design. A lot you can already see by the screenshots.
You might be asking, whats with the belts?
That serves 2 purposes.
First, it gives you a massive movement speed boost, on top of the boost from concrete.
Second, factorio likes to spawn tiny ore veins scattered around the map.
It's rather convenient having a belt nearby that i can simply attach the output of a small mine to.
The intersections are designed in such a way that, by adding a single belt, it will direct all incoming resources coming into that intersection to leave through that chosen direction.
Ideally you'll only ever have one exit open, and it will be towards the nearest train station or otherwise drop-off location.
The size of the rail pieces are based on the maximum distance between 2 large electric poles.
This means 2 things, the first being it is 2 blocks short of being perfectly aligned to the world chunk grid (aw), but on the other hand it is perfectly sized to fit a 3x3 grid of perfectly spaced roboports that will tesselate over the train lines.
https://gyazo.com/b8e5e9be20d8f9bdd991c2a0fd670746
One final thing to note.
Bottlenecking on the trainline belts is inevitible, as there is only 1 belt passing through each straight section.
This means bottlenecking is near neglible as intersections.
If it becomes a problem, you should either route around or add a train station lol.
And on train stations, the adaptor is pre-placed so you can easily attach it on top of any roundabout piece without having to fiddle with finding the one with the right direction on it.

Belt Junctions
There are 2 main factors when considering which belt junction/balancer is most appropriate for your situation.

The first is respect to lanes.
You may have a line of 4 belts with each carrying a different item.
Running this through any kind of balancing will produce significant problems for your factory.
This may or may not always be a factor, such as you may typically have very large belt buses only carrying iron ore or coal.

The second is its size.
Naturally, all blueprints listed here (hopefully, through community effort) will be of the smallest size possible and fit within common criteria, such always having 1 block of free space on either size of a 4-lane belt section to allow for balancers and intersections.
See example;


todo; sort blueprints to lane respective and non lane respective

2 Belts

[4x4] 2-Belt T Intersection. 2 variations. *This cannot be made smaller*


[6x4] 2-Belt Inverted T Intersection. 2 Variations. Can potentially be improved. Top variation is also a balancer and i think it looks more visually pleasing, despite the slightly increased cost with extra splitters.


[6x4] 2-Belt Lane Balancer. 2 Variations. Unsure if this can be improved. The one on the left is visually cleaner.

2 to 3 Belt Mergers

[5x4] 3 to 2 Balanced Belt Merge


[3x5 - Credit to Koder] 3 to 2 Belt Merge without balancing. This assumes the 3 input lanes are already balanced. The benefit to using this is its size.

4 Belts

[5x7 - Credit to MeduSalam] 4 Belt T-Intersection. Left and Right variations.


[6x7] 4 Belt Inverted T-Intersection:


[6x9] 4 Belt Side Balancer:


[4x7 - Source] 4 Belt Balancer. 4 Variations.


[4x6 and 6x6] Straight junction. Wasn't able to make it smaller, so instead i made it look nicer with some power and lighting.


The idea for these consumers is one lane is fully consumed and replaced with belt of a different item, and this is repeated 4 times to replace each belt.
For example, iron ore being consumed and replaced with iron plates.
When used correctly, these will remove the big ugly triangles that inevitably form when connecting furnace/assembler inputs and outputs as well as use the space far more efficiently.

[5x6] Single Lane Consumer


[7x4] Double Lane Consumer

6 Belts

Pending...

8 Belts

[11x8 - Credit to d4rkpl4y3r] 8 Belt Balancer

Solars: http://ragondin-earth.org/divers/solar- ... e-0.84.jpg
This one is not mine, just here for reference.
Source: viewtopic.php?t=5594

[Frightning]

I find it odd that you haven't taken to just shoving the biter's back to your north. You've got nice natural choke points with the large bodies of water there that make your northern side very defensible. It's cheaper and simpler to build one defensive line out a ways than to turret-wall in everything that you want protected. I noticed you're still using Assembly machine 2s, should upgrade those to Assembly machine 3s (assuming you have researched them). They're must faster (1.25 vrs 0.75 base crafting speed) and have twice as many module slots (4 vrs 2). One of the best ways to deal w/ belt-fed assembly machines w/ 3-4 item recipes is to used mixed belts, where each lane of the belt carries a different item used. With such a setup, 2 belts can supply all 4 items used, of course this comes at the expense of throughput.

[Dr. Walrus]

Your beaconized assembly machines running on belts are not quite optimal. If you are putting speed modules in the beacons and productivity modules in the assembly machines, then to achieve the lowest energy use per craft you need to set up your beacons and assembly machines in this pattern.



This also has the benefit of fewer assembly machines overall, which means fewer inserters and fewer belts, which means less of a strain on your cpu and more FPS and UPS.

Check out this reddit post for more information

[AutoMcD]

Let me know if im doin it rite

This depends upon your definition of "optimal".

What I see is $$$$$$

[PyroFire]

I find it odd that you haven't taken to just shoving the biter's back to your north. You've got nice natural choke points with the large bodies of water there that make your northern side very defensible. It's cheaper and simpler to build one defensive line out a ways than to turret-wall in everything that you want protected. I noticed you're still using Assembly machine 2s, should upgrade those to Assembly machine 3s (assuming you have researched them). They're must faster (1.25 vrs 0.75 base crafting speed) and have twice as many module slots (4 vrs 2). One of the best ways to deal w/ belt-fed assembly machines w/ 3-4 item recipes is to used mixed belts, where each lane of the belt carries a different item used. With such a setup, 2 belts can supply all 4 items used, of course this comes at the expense of throughput.

Because map settings: https://gyazo.com/d36095991f2a1e9edf9ca2909a17b051
Handicap, no oil in the starting area.

[Frightning]

I find it odd that you haven't taken to just shoving the biter's back to your north. You've got nice natural choke points with the large bodies of water there that make your northern side very defensible. It's cheaper and simpler to build one defensive line out a ways than to turret-wall in everything that you want protected. I noticed you're still using Assembly machine 2s, should upgrade those to Assembly machine 3s (assuming you have researched them). They're must faster (1.25 vrs 0.75 base crafting speed) and have twice as many module slots (4 vrs 2). One of the best ways to deal w/ belt-fed assembly machines w/ 3-4 item recipes is to used mixed belts, where each lane of the belt carries a different item used. With such a setup, 2 belts can supply all 4 items used, of course this comes at the expense of throughput.

Because map settings: https://gyazo.com/d36095991f2a1e9edf9ca2909a17b051
Handicap, no oil in the starting area.

The map settings, if anything, recommend what I have been suggesting, other than maybe the assem machine upgrades (if you have plenty of throughput as is at least).

[PyroFire]

I find it odd that you haven't taken to just shoving the biter's back to your north. You've got nice natural choke points with the large bodies of water there that make your northern side very defensible. It's cheaper and simpler to build one defensive line out a ways than to turret-wall in everything that you want protected. I noticed you're still using Assembly machine 2s, should upgrade those to Assembly machine 3s (assuming you have researched them). They're must faster (1.25 vrs 0.75 base crafting speed) and have twice as many module slots (4 vrs 2). One of the best ways to deal w/ belt-fed assembly machines w/ 3-4 item recipes is to used mixed belts, where each lane of the belt carries a different item used. With such a setup, 2 belts can supply all 4 items used, of course this comes at the expense of throughput.

Because map settings: https://gyazo.com/d36095991f2a1e9edf9ca2909a17b051
Handicap, no oil in the starting area.

The map settings, if anything, recommend what I have been suggesting, other than maybe the assem machine upgrades (if you have plenty of throughput as is at least).

Also due to how i'm playing, saving every few seconds so the replay is as short as possible.

I'm going to try to keep this thread updated, sort of a personal collection of blueprints.

[d4rkpl4y3r]

Your 6 belt balancer is not a 6 belt balancer at all. For example, there is no path from input 1 to the outputs 4 & 5.

About your 8 belt balancer, I have a smaller one that only occupys 11x8 tiles:

8 belt balancer